Under the Knife

by Tess Gerritsen

  “You’ll do,” she said.

  “I look that bad?” He glanced down at the coffee stains. “I feel like a slob.”

  She laughed. “The owner of that particular coat is a slob. So don’t worry about it. You’ll fit right in.” As they walked to the elevators, she added, “Just remember to think doctor. Get into the right mind-set. You know—brilliant, dedicated, compassionate.”

  “Don’t forget modest.”

  She gave him a slap on the back. “Go get ’em, Dr. Kildare.”

  He stepped into the elevator. “Look, don’t vanish on me, okay? If they get suspicious, I’ll need you to back me up.”

  “I’ll be waiting in the O.R. Oh, David…one last bit of advice.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t commit malpractice, Doctor. You might have to sue yourself.”

  He let out a groan as the doors snapped shut between them. The elevator whined faintly as it descended to the third floor. Then there was silence.

  It was a simple test. Even if David was stopped by Security, it would take only a word from Kate to set him free. Nothing could possibly go wrong. But as she headed up the hallway, her uneasiness grew.

  Back in O.R. 5, she settled into her usual seat near the head of the table and thought of all the hours she’d spent anchored to this one spot. A very small world. A very safe world.

  The sound of a door slapping shut made her glance up. Why was David back so soon? Had there been trouble? She hopped off the stool and pushed into the corridor. There she halted.

  Just down the hall, a faint crack of light shone through the door to O.R. 7. She listened for a moment and heard the rattle of cabinets, the squeal of a drawer sliding open.

  Someone was rummaging through the supplies. A nurse? Or someone else—someone who didn’t belong?

  She glanced toward the far end of the corridor—her only route of escape. The reception desk lay around that corner. If she could just get safely past O.R. 7, she could slip out and call Security. She had to decide now; whoever was going through O.R. 7 might proceed to the other rooms. If she didn’t move now, she’d be trapped.

  Noiselessly she headed down the hall. The slam of a cabinet told her she wouldn’t make it. O.R. 7’s door suddenly swung open. Panicked, she reeled backward to see Dr. Clarence Avery freeze in the doorway. Something slid out of his hand and the sound of shattering glass seemed to reverberate endlessly in the hall. She took one look at his bloodlessly white face, and her fear instantly turned to concern. For a terrifying moment she thought he’d keel over right then and there of a heart attack.

  “Dr.—Dr. Chesne,” he stammered weakly. “I—I didn’t expect— I mean, I…” Slowly he stared down at his feet; that’s when she noticed, through the shadows, the sparkle of glass lying on the floor. He shook his head helplessly. “What…what a mess I’ve made….”

  “It’s not that bad,” she responded quickly. “Here, I’ll help you clean it up.”

  She flicked on the corridor lights. He didn’t move. He just stood there, blinking in the sudden glare. She had never seen him look so old, so frail; the white hair seemed to tremble on his head. She grabbed a handful of paper towels from the scrub sink dispenser and offered him a few sheets, but he still didn’t move. So she crouched at his feet and began gathering up the broken glass. He was wearing one blue sock and one white sock. As she reached for one of the shards, she noticed a label was still affixed.

  “It’s for my dog,” he said weakly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The potassium chloride. It’s for my dog. She’s very sick.”

  Kate looked up at him blankly. “I’m sorry” was all she could think of saying.

  He lowered his head. “She needs to be put to sleep. All morning, she’s been whimpering. I can’t stand listening to it anymore. And she’s old, you know. Over ninety in dog years. But it—it seems cruel, taking her to the vet for that. A total stranger. It would terrify her.”

  Kate rose to her feet. Avery just stood there, clutching the paper towels as if not quite sure what to do with them.

  “I’m sure the vet would be gentle,” she replied. “You don’t have to do it yourself.”

  “But it’s so much better if I do, don’t you think? If I’m the one to tell her goodbye?”

  She nodded. Then she turned to the anesthesia cart and took out a vial of potassium chloride. “Here—” She offered quietly, placing it in his hand. “This should be enough, don’t you think?”

  He nodded. “She’s not a very…big dog.” He let out a shaky breath and turned to leave. Then he stopped and looked back at her. “I’ve always liked you, Kate. You’re the only one who never seemed to be laughing behind my back. Or dropping hints that I’m too old, that I ought to retire.” He sighed and shook his head. “But maybe they’re right, after all.” As he turned to leave, she heard him say, “I’ll do what I can at your hearing.”

  His footsteps creaked off into the corridor. As the sound faded away, her gaze settled on the bits of broken glass in the trash can. The label KCL stared up at her. Potassium chloride, she thought with a frown. When pushed intravenously, it was a deadly poison, resulting in sudden cardiac arrest. And it occurred to her that the same poison that would kill a dog could just as easily be used to kill a human being.

  * * *

  THE CLERK ON WARD 3B was hunched at her desk, clutching a paperback book. On the cover, a half-naked couple grappled beneath the blazing scarlet title: His Wanton Bride. She flipped a page. Her eyes widened. She didn’t even notice David walk by. Only when he was standing right beside her in the nurses’ station did she bother to glance up. Instantly flushing, she slapped down the book.

  “Oh! Can I help you, Doctor…uh…”

  “Smith,” finished David and flashed her such a dazzling smile that she sank like melted jelly into her chair. Wow, he thought as he gazed into a pair of rapturous violet eyes. This white coat really does the trick. “I need to see one of your charts,” he said.

  “Which one?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Room…er…” He glanced over at the chart rack. “Eight.”

  “A or B?”

  “B.”

  “Mrs. Loomis?”

  “Yes, that’s the name. Loomis.”

  She seemed to float out of her chair. Swaying over to the chart rack, she struck a pose of slinky indifference. It took her an inordinately long time to locate room 8B’s chart, despite the fact it was staring her right in the face. David glanced down at the book cover and suddenly felt like laughing.

  “Here it is,” she chirped, holding it out to him in both hands, like some sort of sacred offering.

  “Why, thank you, Ms….”

  “Mann. Janet. Miss.”

  “Yes.” He cleared his throat. Then, turning, he fled to a chair as far away as possible from Miss Janet Mann. He could almost hear her sigh of disappointment as she turned to answer a ringing telephone.

  “Oh, all right.” She sighed. “I’ll bring them down right now.” She grabbed a handful of red-stoppered blood tubes from the pickup tray and hurried out, leaving David alone in the station.

  So that’s all there is to it, he thought, flipping open the metal chart cover. The unfortunate Mrs. Loomis in room 8B was obviously a complicated case, judging by the thickness of her record and the interminable list of doctors on her case. Not only did she have a surgeon and anesthesiologist, there were numerous consultation notes by an internist, psychiatrist, dermatologist and gynecologist. He was reminded of the old saying about too many cooks. Like the proverbial broth, this poor lady didn’t have a chance.

  A nurse walked past, wheeling a medication cart. Another nurse slipped in for a moment to answer the ringing telephone then hurried out again. Neither woman paid him the slightest attention.

  He flipped to the EKG, which was filed at the back of the chart. It would take maybe ten seconds to remove that one page and replace it with another. And with so many doctors passing through the wa
rd—six for Mrs. Loomis alone—no one would notice a thing.

  Murder, he decided, couldn’t be easier. All it took was a white coat.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “I GUESS YOU PROVED your point tonight,” said David as he set two glasses of hot milk on the kitchen table. “About murder in the O.R.”

  “No, we didn’t.” Kate looked down bleakly at the steaming glass. “We didn’t prove a thing, David. Except that the chief of anesthesia’s got a sick dog.” She sighed. “Poor old Avery. I must have scared the wits out of him.”

  “Sounds like you scared the wits out of each other. By the way, does he have a dog?”

  “He wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “I’m just asking. I don’t know the man.” He took a sip of milk and it left a faint white mustache on his stubbled lip. He seemed dark and out of place in his gleaming kitchen. A faint beard shadowed his jaw, and his shirt, which had started out so crisp this morning, was now mapped with wrinkles. He’d undone his top button and she felt a peculiar sense of weightlessness as she caught a glimpse of dark gold hair matting his chest.

  She looked down fiercely at her milk. “I’m pretty sure he does have a dog,” she continued. “In fact, I remember seeing a picture on his desk.”

  “He keeps a picture of a dog on his desk?”

  “It’s of his wife, really. She’s holding this sort of brownish terrier. She was really very beautiful.”

  “I take it you mean his wife.”

  “Yes. She had a stroke a few months ago. It devastated that poor man, to put her in a nursing home. He’s been shuffling through his duties ever since.” Mournfully she took a sip. “I bet he couldn’t do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Kill his dog. Some people are incapable of hurting a fly.”

  “While others are perfectly capable of murder.”

  She looked at him. “You still think it was murder?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment, and his silence frightened her. Was her only ally slipping away? “I don’t know what I think.” He sighed. “So far I’ve been going on instinct, not facts. And that won’t hold up in a courtroom.”

  “Or a committee hearing,” she added morosely.

  “Your hearing’s on Tuesday?”

  “And I still haven’t the faintest idea what to tell them.”

  “Can’t you get a delay? I’ll cancel my appointments tomorrow. Maybe we can pull together some evidence.”

  “I’ve already asked for a delay. It was turned down. Anyway, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence. All we have is a pair of murders, with no obvious connection to Ellen’s death.”

  He sat back, frowning at the table. “What if the police are barking up the wrong tree? What if Charlie Decker’s just a wild card?”

  “They found his fingerprints, David. And I saw him there.”

  “But you didn’t actually see him kill anyone.”

  “No. But who else had a motive?”

  “Let’s think about this for a minute.” Idly, David reached for the saltshaker and set it in the center of the table. “We know Henry Tanaka was a very busy man. And I’m not talking about his practice. He was having an affair—” David moved the pepper shaker next to the salt “—probably with Ann Richter.”

  “Okay. But where does Ellen fit in?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question.” He reached over and tapped the sugar jar. “Where does Ellen O’Brien fit in?”

  Kate frowned. “A love triangle?”

  “Possible. But a man doesn’t have to stop at one mistress. He could’ve had a dozen. And they each in turn could have had jealous lovers.”

  “Triangles within triangles? This sounds wilder by the minute. All this romping around in bedrooms! Doctors having affairs left and right! I just can’t picture it.”

  “It happens. And not just in hospitals.”

  “Law offices, too, hmm?”

  “I’m not saying I’ve done it. But we’re all human.”

  She couldn’t help smiling. “It’s funny. When we first met, I didn’t think of you as being particularly human.”

  “No?”

  “You were a threat. The enemy. Just another damn lawyer.”

  “Oh. Scum of the earth, you mean.”

  “You did play the part well.”

  He winced. “Thanks a lot.”

  “But it’s not that way anymore,” she said quickly. “I can’t think of you as just another lawyer. Not since…”

  Her voice faded as their eyes suddenly locked.

  “Not since I kissed you,” he finished softly.

  Warmth flooded her cheeks. Abruptly she rose to her feet and carried the glass to the sink, all the time aware of his gaze on her back. “It’s all gotten so complicated,” she commented with a sigh.

  “What? The fact I’m human?”

  “The fact we’re both human,” she blurted out. Even without looking at him, she could sense the attraction, the electricity, crackling between them.

  She washed the glass. Twice. Then, calmly, deliberately, she sat back down at the table. He was watching her, a wry look of amusement on his face.

  “I’ll be the first to admit it,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “It is a hell of an inconvenience, being human. A slave to all those pesky biological urges.”

  Biological urges. What a hopelessly pale description of the hormonal storm now raging inside her. Avoiding his gaze, she focused on the saltshaker, sitting at the center of the table. She thought suddenly of Henry Tanaka. Of triangles within triangles. Had all those deaths been a consequence of nothing more than lust and jealousy gone berserk?

  “You’re right,” she agreed, thoughtfully touching the saltshaker. “Being human leads to all sorts of complications. Even murder.”

  She sensed his tension before he even spoke a word. His gaze fell on the table and all at once he went completely still. “I can’t believe we didn’t think of it.”

  “Of what?” she asked.

  He shoved his empty glass toward the sugar jar. It gave the diagram a fourth corner. “We’re not dealing with a triangle. It’s a square.”

  There was a pause. “Your grasp of geometry is really quite amazing,” she said politely.

  “What if Tanaka did have a second girlfriend—Ellen O’Brien?”

  “That’s our old triangle.”

  “But we’ve left someone out. Someone very important.” He tapped the empty milk glass.

  Kate frowned at the four objects on the table. “My God,” she whispered. “Mrs. Tanaka.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I never even thought of his wife.”

  He looked up. “Maybe it’s time we did.”

  * * *

  THE JAPANESE WOMAN who opened the clinic door was wearing fire-engine-red lipstick and face powder that was several shades too pale for her complexion. She looked like a fugitive from a geisha house. “Then you’re not with the police?” she asked.

  “Not exactly,” replied David. “But we do have a few questions—”

  “I’m not talking to any more reporters.” She started to shut the door.

  “We’re not reporters, Mrs. Tanaka. I’m an attorney. And this is Dr. Kate Chesne.”

  “Well, what do you want, then?”

  “We’re trying to get information about another murder. It’s related to your husband’s death.”

  Sudden interest flickered in the woman’s eyes. “You’re talking about that nurse, aren’t you? That Richter woman.”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “We’ll be glad to tell you everything we know. If you’ll just let us come in.”

  She hesitated, curiosity and caution waging a battle in her eyes. Curiosity won. She opened the door and gestured for them to come into the waiting room. She was tall for a Japanese; taller, even, than Kate. She was wearing a simple blue dress and high heels and gold seashell earrings. Her hair was so black it might have looked artificial had there not bee
n the single white strand tracing her right temple. Mari Tanaka was a remarkably beautiful woman.

  “You’ll have to excuse the mess,” she apologized, pausing in the impeccably neat waiting room. “But there’s been so much confusion. So many things to take care of.” She gazed around at the deserted couches, as though wondering where all the patients had gone. Magazines were still arrayed on the coffee table and a box of children’s toys sat in the corner, waiting to be played with. The only hint that tragedy had struck this office was the sympathy card and a vase of white lilies, sent by a grieving patient. Through a glass partition in front of the reception desk, two women could be seen in the adjoining office, surrounded by stacks of files.

  “There are so many patients to be referred,” said Mrs. Tanaka with a sigh. “And all those outstanding bills. I had no idea things would be so chaotic. I always let Henry take care of everything. And now that he’s gone…” She sank tiredly onto the couch. “I take it you know about my husband and that—that woman.”

  David nodded. “Did you?”

  “Yes. I mean, I didn’t know her name. But I knew there had to be someone. Funny, isn’t it? How they say the wife is always the last to know.” She gazed at the two women behind the glass partition. “I’m sure they knew about her. And people at the hospital, they must have known, as well. I was the only one who didn’t. The stupid wife.” She looked up. “You said you’d tell me about this woman. Ann Richter. What do you know about her?”

  “I worked with her,” Kate began.

  “Did you?” Mrs. Tanaka shifted her gaze to Kate. “I never even met her. What was she like? Was she pretty?”

  Kate hesitated, knowing instinctively that the other woman was only searching for more information with which to torture herself. Mari Tanaka seemed consumed by some bizarre need for self-punishment. “Ann was…attractive, I suppose,” she said.

  “Intelligent?”

  Kate nodded. “She was a good nurse.”

  “So was I.” Mrs. Tanaka bit her lip and looked away. “She was a blonde, I hear. Henry liked blondes. Isn’t that ironic? He liked the one thing I couldn’t be.” She glanced at David with sudden feminine hostility. “And I suppose you like Oriental women.”